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Post by angel on Mar 18, 2006 18:54:08 GMT -5
She grew up near you! I just can't believe how good her writing is. Brilliant.
I've only read Norweigan Wood by Haruki Marakami and I'd give it a big enthusiastic thumbs up, though I'd like to read a few more of his books.
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Post by Nikki on Mar 19, 2006 1:56:17 GMT -5
^ steve martin is a pretty good playwright, too. "picasso at the lapin agile" is a really enjoyable play. I'm reading Chuck Palahniuk's "Haunted" right now. I read "V for Vendetta" a while ago. it was one of the most amazing novels i've read in years. Better writing than almost any regular novel. Alan Moore. man. everyone should read it before they see the movie. "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynmann" - a book by a nobel-prize winning physisict who worked on the manhattan project, and who is as brilliant as anyone i think i've ever read before, and who's damned funny. He's kind of full of himself and his brilliance, but he's one of the few people who really deserves to be. You're reading Haunted! Sweet. It was a while ago, but I remember really liking how he wove in all the different characters and how they each related their individual stories. I need to reread that at some point, I don't recall all of the stories although the one with the guy in the pool with the huge pool cleaning suckage device did sort of brand itself into my memory - Guts was it? Some guy on Amazon wrote that this book reminded him of Roald Dahl's short stories for adults - I can kind of see that. His stories are a lot of fun as well. I just saw V for Vendetta last night so I've ruined everything haven't I? I'll have to get around to reading the book though. I liked the movie, but it sort of ruins the element of surprise in the book knowing it all now doesn't it... I used 'Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman' for some science presentation I was doing. I think it was on nanotechnology or something, but I remember thinking it was a fun book and meant to go back to it. Thanks for the reminder, I had forgotten about that one. |
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Post by jenming on Mar 20, 2006 21:59:54 GMT -5
I'm reading Chuck Palahniuk's "Haunted" right now. jenming, are you a Palahniuk fan? I also recommend Survivor if you hadn't read it already. I reckon its his best novel. I wouldn't call myself a "fan", but I am definitely someone who has extreme respect for the man. He has a strange ability to accurately write about some of the darkest points people's psychological underbellies. like nikki mentioned, that first sub-story in Haunted about the pool/suction situation, completely grabbed me within the first half hour of beginning the book. It was like looking at a murder scene. You can't tear your eyes away, because it's more *real* and fascinating than you're used to, but it still makes you feel like you shouldn't be looking. Each story in Haunted is about that ugly underside of humans. In completely different ways. In some ways, Fight Club (yes, i read the book, too) was also about it. I'll definitely look for Survivor. perhaps i'll be a "fan" soon. Nikki: I haven't seen the movie yet (i'm waiting until the high-quality versions come out in china), but my guess is that the book (which is actually a graphic novel) won't be ruined by the movie. The book doesn't really have too many interesting surprises which could be "spoiled". A couple maybe, but the book is so moving in general, i actually don't expect that the movie would be able to be moving in the same way. |
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Post by azalune on Mar 21, 2006 0:54:38 GMT -5
"The Waves" by Virginia Woolf is an excellent book. One of the characters, Rhoda is perhaps one of my all-time favorite characters in fiction. I really empathize with her emotions.
In pure stream-of-consciousness style, Woolf presents a cross-section of multiple yet parallel lives, each marked by a disintegrating force of mutual tragedy. The Waves is her searching exploration of individual and collective identity, and the observations and emotions of life, from the simplicity and surging optimism of youth to the vacancy and despair of middle-age.
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Post by etudes on Mar 21, 2006 2:21:54 GMT -5
dark angel by anthony horowitz
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Post by dave on Mar 21, 2006 10:03:10 GMT -5
You actually liked that book? I thought the ending was pretty lame. definitely a book worth reading and forming your own opinions on though, if you haven't read it. I thought animal farm was a lot easier to read~ well urm haven't read it since I was 12-13 so it's a while ago now! finally got round to reading the da vinci code this week, apparently it's gonna come out in the cinema some time this year (?) so thought i might as well read it before then. Enjoyable enough to read, shame half the stuff Dan Brown wrote is absolute BS tho. |
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Post by hapalicious on Mar 21, 2006 10:19:58 GMT -5
You actually liked that book? I thought the ending was pretty lame. definitely a book worth reading and forming your own opinions on though, if you haven't read it. I thought animal farm was a lot easier to read~ well urm haven't read it since I was 12-13 so it's a while ago now! finally got round to reading the da vinci code this week, apparently it's gonna come out in the cinema some time this year (?) so thought i might as well read it before then. Enjoyable enough to read, shame half the stuff Dan Brown wrote is absolute BS tho. ^thought so too about Dan Brown da vinci code...dunno why people are making such a big deal of it tho since it s BS.... neways....i liked brave new world better than 1984.... |
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Post by dave on Mar 21, 2006 10:29:22 GMT -5
^oh haven't read that i'll put that on my list of things to read...
oh yeah Tom Hanks is gona be playing Robert Langdon...think i pictured someone more like russell crowe playing the role but that'll be interesting to see how that pans out.
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Post by hapalicious on Mar 21, 2006 10:34:39 GMT -5
"The Waves" by Virginia Woolf is an excellent book. One of the characters, Rhoda is perhaps one of my all-time favorite characters in fiction. I really empathize with her emotions. In pure stream-of-consciousness style, Woolf presents a cross-section of multiple yet parallel lives, each marked by a disintegrating force of mutual tragedy. The Waves is her searching exploration of individual and collective identity, and the observations and emotions of life, from the simplicity and surging optimism of youth to the vacancy and despair of middle-age. ;D yes ! go Rhoda ! i like her relationship w/ Louis too, like they understand each other but being both loners in a way....even if Louis is surrounded by others, he feels different, and actually understands Rhoda....who happens to be my favourite character as well... ‘Now Miss Hudson,’ said Rhoda, ‘has shut the book. Now the terror is beginning. Now taking her lump of chalk she draws figures, six, seven, eight, and then a cross and then a line on the blackboard. What is the answer? The others look; they look with understanding. Louis writes; Susan writes; Neville writes; Jinny writes; even Bernard has now begun to write. But I cannot write. I see only figures. The others are handing in their answers, one by one. Now it is my turn. But I have no answer. The others are allowed to go. They slam the door. Miss Hudson goes. I am left alone to find an answer. The figures mean nothing now. Meaning has gone. The clock ticks. The two hands are convoys marching through a desert. The black bars on the clock face are green oases. The long hand has marched ahead to find water. The other, painfully stumbles among hot stones in the desert. It will die in the desert. The kitchen door slams. Wild dogs bark far away. Look, the loop of the figure is beginning to fill with time; it holds the world in it. I begin to draw a figure and the world is looped in it, and I myself am outside the loop; which I now join--so--and seal up, and make entire. The world is entire, and I am outside of it, crying, "Oh save me, from being blown for ever outside the loop of time!" 'There Rhoda sits staring at the blackboard,' said Louis, 'in the schoolroom, while we ramble off, picking here a bit of thyme, pinching here a leaf of southernwood while Bernard tells a story. Her shoulder-blades meet across her back like the wings of a small butterfly. And as she stares at the chalk figures, her mind lodges in those white circles; it steps through those white loops into emptiness, alone. They have no meaning for her. She has no answer for them. She has no body as the others have. And I, who speak with an Australian accent, whose father is a banker in Brisbane, do not fear her as I fear the others.'  |
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Post by hapalicious on Mar 21, 2006 10:43:08 GMT -5
^oh haven't read that i'll put that on my list of things to read... oh yeah Tom Hanks is gona be playing Robert Langdon...think i pictured someone more like russell crowe playing the role but that'll be interesting to see how that pans out. mmmh...i don t think i ll be seeing the movie....was quite disappointed by the book itself.... neways, after reading of mice and men for the 7 th time, i m still just as moved by it.... the last book i carried in my bag was crap and it s back on the shelf right now.... anything entertaining to read on the train ? |
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Post by Nikki on Mar 21, 2006 13:14:13 GMT -5
^oh haven't read that i'll put that on my list of things to read... oh yeah Tom Hanks is gona be playing Robert Langdon...think i pictured someone more like russell crowe playing the role but that'll be interesting to see how that pans out. Tom Hanks doesn't seem quite right for the part to me either. Somewhere in the book it describes Langdon as being a Harrison Ford type... Tom Hanks doesn't seem ... stuffy-professory enough for me. But meh. I still want to see the movie though, I think it looks fun. The book isn't 'groundbreaking literature,' and I'm not sure why it's picked up such a cult following, but I do think it was an entertaining page turner that was well paced. |
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Post by JohnnyUtah on Mar 21, 2006 15:05:14 GMT -5
Alot of people I've talked to in Vancouver are happy that Tom Hanks is playing Langdon. but I'm uncertain about Tom Hanks in this role. I always imagined someone like Ralph Fiennes or maybe Daniel Day-Lewis playing the part.
I think the author Dan Brown is from Vancouver.
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Post by Nikki on Mar 21, 2006 17:41:11 GMT -5
^ Daniel Day Lewis will forever have long wavy wind tousled hair, a rifle slung over his shoulder, a tomahawk strapped to his leg, and be continuously jumping through a waterfall (for me, anyway). Which is awful, I know. I can't really see him playing Langdon, but Ralph Fiennes I can imagine.
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Post by JohnnyUtah on Mar 21, 2006 17:50:23 GMT -5
^ True, . I loved that movie too, but before his Mohican days he did a fantastic job in "My Left Foot" as the Irish poet/writer Christy Brown. So he does have great range as an actor.
Harrison Ford on the other hand, . . . He'll always appear to me as a renegade rogue smuggler in a galaxy far far away that doesn't believe in hokey-pokey Jedi superstitions over a good laser blaster.
, . . . but that's just me
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Post by angel on Mar 21, 2006 20:56:34 GMT -5
Tom Hanks is just wrong so wrong for Robert Langdon!! What were they thinking? Box-office friendly, that's what they were thinking!
Eric Bana would have been good... well, maybe too young actually. I agree with Ralph Fiennes. Harrison maybe a couple of decades ago would have been spot on.
I'll probably watch the film. A simple girl like me has nothing better to do.
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